City Recital Hall, January 12 9/10 For some artists it happens when they’re very young, fostering only disappointment thereafter. For others it never happens, leaving a uniform career trajectory of relative mediocrity or unacknowledged genius. For Sandy Evans it happened here: everything she has poured into the previous four decades as an artist, saxophonist, composer, […]

Magic Mirrors Spiegeltent, January 10 7/10 Dear God, when she’s good, she’s so very good. You hear it in the way she can snip a consonant as precisely as a practiced circumciser might something else; even more in the way she can let a final consonant crumble to nothing more than breath, like a fine […]

Roslyn Packer Theatre, January 9 7/10 It might be the sense of belonging or security, or it might be a nest for hatching offspring. It may be cluttered with possessions or memories, or be the one house in the street where love lives. Whatever the case, most – but certainly not all – people seem […]

Recent Posts

About John Shand

John Shand is a playwright, librettist, author, journalist, drummer and critic. He has written about music (and occasionally theatre) for The Sydney Morning Herald for over 20 years. His books include Don’t Shoot The Best Boy! – The Film Crew At Work (Currency), Jazz – The Australian Accent (UNSW Press) and The Phantom Of The Soap Opera(Wizard). In 2017 he won the inaugural Arts Journalism Award at the Walkleys, the nation’s preeminent awards for journalism. He lives in Katoomba (NSW) with she who is called The Mouse. He enjoys wine, and wishes he could say in moderation.